March 18, 2009

Joanna Bogle, a prominent English Catholic commentator, knocks one out of the park with this excellent interview on British television in which she explains why the whole "condoms prevent AIDS" argument is vacuous and based on junk science. The woman Joanna is debating, while articulate, is simply out of touch with the biomedical realities involved in condom use. And the show's host, when he's not interrupting Joanna as she drives home some new point, throws some red meat to the pro-contraception people in his audience when he avers (stupidly) that Pope Benedict, by his reiteration of Catholic moral teaching, has "condemned many Africans to death." Although the host and the other woman are good examples of fuzzy thinking, I think Joanna did a yeoman's work in presenting the facts, clearly and compellingly. What do you think?

The host is so biased. He is claiming that the Pope has condemned 22 million people do death. And then told her to calm down. Rediculous!

And the pro-condom commentator, and the host are lying through their teeth.

Look at UGANDA AIDS went DOWN when they used the ABC method, ABSTINANCE, BE FAITHFUL, CONDOMNS ONLY IF THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. This reduced the AIDS rate, now that condoms have been foisted on Uganda the AIDS rate has gone up.

These people are liers, and tools. Good for Joanna for not tearing off their heads, that would have been so hard to keep your cool. And good for her for continuing to stand up for the truth.

Great points by this Catholic woman. She's very right...and sadly, the others are trying their best to avoid her facts.

..and the condom 'promoter' woman is basically saying..."Risk your life to get AIDS and 'die' for the sake of promiscuity...because we should not rely on teaching people to abstain, even if it means 'death'" thats just downright illogical!

I think we all need to take a lesson from the woman with the condom message. She managed to stay calm. I agree with Joanna Bogle that she's talking about death, and I can appreciate how terribly difficult a situation she was in, as the interviewer was discounting her evidence. It's also frustrating that the pro-condom folks have no problem lying when the truth doesn't suit their purposes, and fail to see that simply pouring more condoms into a country will not change the results they've already seen elsewhere. They keep figuring that the increase is because they haven't fully saturated the population, and fail to see that the rise directly correlates to the extent to which their campaign has penetrated the target market. Frustrating, to say the least.

I'd love to read a well written study that shows the results of the Philippines and Uganda (was that the Catholic country in Africa) and how their AIDS rates decrease when they follow the "Catholic method" of abstinence. Also, we might find that we get better results if we drop the name "Catholic", as it results in many who do not appreciate the Truth of the Catholic Church simply tuning out anything further said on the matter. Better to share the truth and only in time express where it comes from, leaving the label for later.

That interview was terrible. She made great points, but they would never let her speak or finish a point and then twisted her words. Her exasperation is justified. Once again, you can't reason with unreasonable people.

Good ol' Joanna...kudos to her for standing up for the truth with FACTS! I just want to slap the other two. This is an excellent example of standing up against the devil.

One of my favorite sayings is "I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person." Sometimes, however, (and more and more in these times) we simply must take a stand against such outrageous bunk. These two are examples of the typical ill-informed, immoral liberals who present themselves as do-gooders for the evils of the world, when all they do is contribute to it.

oh see now, I always thought that AIDS was spread through sex, not by the absence of condoms. Guess I'd better go stock up on rubbers because apparently abstinence and fidelity won't protect me.

Joanna's the only one who addresses the dignity of the people in Africa, the Philippines, and Thailand, while the other two just see the statistics. The other woman cites that condom use is effective against AIDS among sex workers - Joanna states that the sex worker doesn't have to be a sex worker.

I wonder if those other two and others like them will ever realize how condescending they're being toward the people about whom they feign such concern. They're basically saying of the whole Third World: they don't have the self-control or intelligence to abstain, so let's throw rubbers at them.

I'd be interested to know the stats for other sexually transmitted diseases in these areas of "100% condom use" this other woman mentions, particularly HPV, against which condoms are no protection.

Infuriating. How did Western Civilization become so dispossessed of logic that otherwise intelligent people believe that engaging in the specific behavior that transmits a lethal disease - provided one uses a safeguard with an approximately 30% failure rate - will bring the incidence of said disease down over an abstinence-only program?

Contrasted against an actually-adhered-to practice of abstinence, the incidence of HIV can only go up as the failure rate takes effect!

Their argument is equivalent to telling someone that if they buy a widescreen TV when it is on sale, they are actually saving money over and above buying no TV at all. It's madness.

Joanna posted this excellent list of the points she made in her interview: http://joannabogle.blogspot.com/2009/03/now-here-are-facts.htmlGreat resource and thanks again, Joanna, for having the courage to stand up and hold your ground.

Not only are the interviewer and the 2nd interviewee completely small-minded, they are down-right rude to Joanna. How can you invite someone to an interview and not let them speak? And then accuse their spiritual leader, without grounds, of condemning 22 million people to death?! I would get angry too!

Joanna, whom I love, needed to remain calm. She needed to make the connection between condoms and promiscuity: condoms make sex easy (small chance of procreation), which makes sex common, which makes sex casual, which makes for promiscuity. THIS is why condoms will never solve the AIDS problem and will only drive up promiscuity, which creates more problems.These nonCatholics don't understand how contraception drives promiscuity by furthering the erroneous notion that sex can and should be completely divorced from it's procreative aspect. That is what we need to articulate calmly, over and over again.In times past, the possibility that conception might occure was a CHECK against reckless sexual activity. Remove that CHECK and there is no reason for sexual restraint...which is the root of AIDS.

May God bless Joanna Bogle. It is a noble endeavor to engage those who have no wish to participate in rational argument. That sort of obnoxious display by the interviewer can only lead others to Christ.

I am grateful for the kind comments on this blog. Let's face it, I was fairly hopeless on this TV programme, lost my cool and just looked rather absurd. Lessons to be learned another time...if there is another time! I think it would be unwise for me to do more TV of this type for a while: there are others better and more calm than I.

If you want to get a flavour of the atmosphere in which the interview took place, you really need to see the News clip which preceded it, which isn't available - it ended with a confident assertion to the effect that the Pope was condemning African women to a deadly disease, and "a baby every year". You can something of the general feel of the Channel 4 approach by going to Jon Snow's Blog and reading the comments. I've also had a number of comments to my own blog "Auntie Joanna Writes" - I've printed as many as I could of the critical ones I received, but not those which were either obscene or threatening, or said vulgar things about the H. Father or the Church.

Norman: "It's alarming how the host simply will not listen to J. Bogle's points. Clearly he is the one with the agenda."

The media representatives of secular society display far stronger faith than most Catholics and other Christians. They don't need any proof for their beliefs.

Darwin's Theory, while it does possess some useful ideas, in terms of evolution has never been able to show the missing links between any of the hominids and mankind as we first appeared on Earth. But that doesn't stop secularists from believing that life was generated spontaneously and has provided an unbroken line of mutated descendants, culminating with us.

Similarly, their faith in condoms is based on no proof that their use by entire societies will prevent diseases.